Re: More thoughts on BrSc orthography & phonology

Ray:
> >but at the same time,
> >any real achievements in brevity are going to require what from
> >a natlangoid perspective looks like baroqueness.
>
> Yes, but the two goals of (i) brevity (using the Roman script) and (ii)
> IAL-hood were those of Reginald Dutton when he designed and developed
> Speedwords.  It was as a result of dissatisfaction with his solution that
> work on BrSc began.  There clearly has to be compromise and trade off
> between the two goals - that's the challenge.
Key things to maximize brevity:

(1) Maximize the combinatorial symbols.
    -- but here for IAL reasons you're choosing c. 26 letters
(2) Minimize combinatorial restrictions on basic symbols.
(3) Maximize homonymy.
(4) Make relative length reflect relative frequency.

> >This does not really seem like disemy to me; if it were disemy, the
> >dictionary would contain an entry for {pt} that would list two
> >meanings. But why should the dictionary not simply list separately
> >pt+fron and pt+back?
>
> Yes - I agree.  You note I put 'disemy' between quotes.  I was using it in
> the same way that Srikanth uses enneasemy.  In fact what you say about {pt}
> above seems to me could be said about enneasemy in Lin.  Srikanth does
> indeed list, e.g. nine meanings against the word {h}.  I quote:
> "h: happy, tall, heavy; animate being, station, test; have, keep, rise"
>
> But these meanings must be listed in the above order because the short
> lexicon is prefaced with an explanation how to read off the meanings.  Why
> should not a dictionary simply list separately:
> h (A, 1) = happy
> h (A, 2) = tall
> h (A, 3) = heavy
> h (N, 1) = animate being
> h (N, 2) = station
> h (N, 3) = test
> h (V, 1) = (to) have
> h (V, 2) = (to) keep
> h (V, 3) = (to) rise
>
> The numbers refer to Lin's "generations" which are shown by differences in
> pronunciation.  My 'pt+front' & 'pt+back' can be considered as
> 'generations' in the sense of Lin generations.  What I haven't done is to
> give the same form different meanings according to it's part of speech.
The crucial issue is whether the element that distinguishes the polysemes/
homonyms from one another must be marked. The Lin A/N/V distinction is
not marked; it is recovered from grammatical context. The 1/2/3 distinction
is marked, by cements, tho I have a vague memory of Skrintha writing
about toggles that would set everything to 1 until toggled to 2 or 3,
and so on. In partial contrast the BrSc distinguishers +front and +back
would always be marked.

--And.

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